HH: What do you hope for the future of your homestead? But all the reading in the world won’t really have you fully prepared for the actual experience of doing it. They’re easy to find online through social media and blogs, or by visiting feed stores and finding some contacts. Talk to others that are already doing it. If you start small and grow into it, you can learn without stretching yourself so thin so that you feel like quitting. You’ll get plenty of on-the-job training. HH: What is your recommendation for people who are interested in the homesteading lifestyle but feel they do not know enough to begin? Seriously! You have no idea how often I’ve stood out in the middle of the garden or chicken yard, looking up how to do something on my phone. HH: When you started homesteading, did you have the requisite know-how for everything you wanted to do? I thought everyone grew up learning how to grow and prepare food! My first year in the city, I remember being so homesick for food that tasted real that my mom sent me a care package filled with vegetables from the garden. I didn’t realize until I got to the city for college that this wasn’t a common skill. She taught me really good food preparation practices. My mom canned everything so I grew up doing it. The thing I remember most was hours and hours and days and weeks of canning. For a while, we had rabbits (over 250 at one time) and sometimes we’d have pigs, cows and sheep. Growing up we always had huge gardens and chickens and horses. Cancer just ramped it up more for me and made me much more serious about it. KH: It had a huge influence on me and was also a reason I got into gardening in the city. How do you think it has impacted your homesteading style? HH: You were born and raised in rural Montana. The blog never felt like work because it was just an outpouring of my life - what I was learning and doing as a new chicken person and how I was getting creative about finding space to grow more food while I lived in the city. Chickens were a gateway animal to a serious change in how I view food. I finally decided I needed some of my own, and I’m so glad I got them. When I started it, I didn’t even yet own chickens. There weren’t really any blogs out there at that time that dealt with chickens, especially for people that wanted small flocks. KH: When I started blogging, I was post-cancer and enlarging my raised beds and contemplating chickens. HH: Why did you decide to start blogging? Thankfully, the treatment was hugely successful and I’m cancer free today, but the experience made me slow down and be more deliberate about life. KH: Bumping up against death was pretty life altering to say the least. I’d never been sick, never been around anyone who was, didn’t know anyone who’d had cancer, so the rug really got pulled out from under me. I was totally shocked and unprepared for it, and the treatment made me very sick for about a year even though the treatment itself was around 5 to 6 months. Three weeks later, I was diagnosed with stage III lymphoma. I’d felt sick-ish all summer while I trained for it - I was a pretty avid biker at the time - and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting over the training curve that summer. I’d just returned from biking down the Oregon coast to help raise money to build a dormitory for an orphanage. KH: I was diagnosed with cancer about 11 years ago. You know that saying they have that it takes a small village to raise a child? I say it about farming - it takes a small village to hold down the farm. It’s really a nice way to do this because we can help each other out. I live in the second house on a 38-acre farm owned by friends of mine. The farm currently has around 40 chickens, a small herd of Dexter cattle, an orchard, a blueberry grove and dozens of other fruit trees scattered around the property. I’ve been here for a little over three years.
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